WTF! Moment

Just had a funny WTF! moment.

As mentioned in my previous post, I've been working on things related to audio output.  Tonight I breadboarded a simple amplifier using an LM386.  I decided to run a smoke test, and connected it to the 5V output on the LM3S1968 board with the input open.

When I turned it on, I got light buzzing.  I decided to see what happened when I moved the 10k pot... suddenly, my speaker was spewing forth a synthesized voice.  I was shocked and moved my hand... the sound stopped.  Touching the pot again caused the voice to return.

I soon realized that I was picking up some local AM radio station (I could also hear other stations in the background), but it is quite the conicidence for that station to be running an interview with Roger Ebert, who uses a synthesized voice??!

I momentarily wondered if I had gone mad. :-)

Back to Electronics

Wow, it's been a while since I wrote anything here.

These days I'm back to piddling about with electronics/robotics.  Sure, I can't seem to find my book on netting... but I don't think that's the reason I've swung around. :-)

I've pulled all my crap out of boxes, and set up what wifey calls a "cave" in the spare room.  That's a pretty accurate description--I'm packed in with other stuff at a little desk in a small room.

My focus these days is on some sort of smart, extensible toy for kids (and hackers), which has got me doing a lot of reading about how Text-to-Speech technology works (since you can't have a smart toy that doesn't TALK!).

I'm all for making things difficult on myself, so my current project is trying to use the little LM3S1968 board (used this earlier in the year to make Lucas a game) to do some formant speech synthesis.  I don't think this will be super hard, but there's enough tech/math involved to make it an interesting challenge.

We'll see how far this renewed interest takes me.